Category: Wine

It’s not too often you’ll find me with a glass of anything in my hand other than wine, but after a solid hour of blueberry picking with friends in the Finger Lakes, I opted for something a little different. Just one day short of #NationalTequilaDay, we made a fresh batch of Blueberry margaritas to go with the taco night I requested for my birthday. (Major shoutout to my best friend for making this birthday dream of mine come true 😂!)

Anyway, this margarita is ridiculously easy to make, and it tastes AMAZING. Check out the recipe below and try it for yourself!

One batch | Serves 4

1 cup fresh blueberries

Juice of 1 Lime

1 and 1/4 cup tequila

6 tablespoons agave nectar

Optional: dash of orange bitters

Mint leaves

Ice

Directions: Rub the rim of the glasses with a lime wedge before flipping over to coat in sea salt. Add ice. In a cocktail mixer, muddle together the blueberries and lime juice until the blueberries are all crushed and the juice turns a dark purple color. Next, add the tequila, agave nectar and bitters (optional). Once that’s done, give everything a good few shakes and pour into the glasses. Last but not least, add a few sprigs of mint to the top and serve.

Donning the green apron all throughout high school and most of college, I picked up on a few tips and tricks of the trade, particularly when it comes to getting more for your money. After all, even being three years out of college I still can’t justify spending nearly $5 on a cup of flavored coffee.

So to start, you have to understand that the Starbucks menu is purposely complicated, and that, in my opinion, is for two reasons:

To make you feel like you’re partaking in a sort of elitist club known only to those that think they are above the words small, medium and large.

To hide the loopholes that lie within.

Both drinks pictured above are iced lattes, and a plain one from Starbucks consists of nothing more than shots of espresso, ice and milk. So you can say you want a latte, which comes to about $4, or you can pay a dollar less by asking for a shot or two of espresso, they call it a ‘doppio’, and asking the barista to add your choice in milk. They can’t say no, otherwise the ice will melt. But, if they don’t fill it to the top, do it yourself at the condiment bar. It’s that simple.

This section feels very A/S/L, so I'll keep it short and not as creepy. I'm Jules and I live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with a roommate and about four different cactus plants. (Read: not cats) I started Jules and Java as a way to sort of stop and smell the coffee during finals week at Syracuse (Read: a time when I should have been studying, not starting a blog). But, everything seemed to have worked out. I passed, I graduated, I got a job, and Jules and Java still serves the same purpose it did x amount of years ago - at least for me, anyway. Hope you find just as much a little break from reality reading as I do writing. Cheers!